The Listening Machine takes tweets and turns them into music

Ever wondered what your tweets would sound like when transformed into music? That’s pretty much what the folks at The Listening Machine are trying to achieve, by taking the tweets of 500 people in the UK and transforming those tweets into a piece of music. This idea was formed by Daniel Jones, Peter Gregson with the help of the Britten Sinfonia orchestra. According to its website:

“At the core of The Listening Machine is a piece of software that monitors the Twitter activity of 500 people around the UK, selected proportionally from eight different fields: arts, business, education, health, politics, science, sport and technology.”

The software will also analyze the sentiments of the tweets, taking into account words like “ace” and “rubbish” which will inform the software of the tone of the tweet. It will then rank it as positive or negative and will translate the syllables and rhythm of the message into musical notes. The goal is to create a 6 month musical installation which will be the “live soundtrack to the thoughts, opinions, feelings and conversations of the U.K.’s population, as played out on Twitter.” Admittedly the music itself isn’t exactly catchy but it’s certainly interesting to see how our tweets can be turned into music. If you’re interested to learn more or to check out the musical piece, head on over to The Listening Machine for the details.